


Until I Can See Again

by poisontaster



Series: Every Broken Thing [21]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Character(s) of Color, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Lack of Communication, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sam Has Powers, Secret Relationship, Sibling Incest, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-29
Updated: 2006-05-29
Packaged: 2018-05-12 00:15:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5646979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean look for help and start to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until I Can See Again

**Author's Note:**

> This was written between S1 & 2 and, as such, is not canon compliant. Just play along.

_Would your love in all its finery  
tear at the darkness all around me   
until I can feel again   
until I can breathe again_

_Would your eyes like midnight fireflies  
light up the trenches where my heart lies   
until I can see again   
to find my way back again_

_"Train Wreck" by Sarah McLachlan_

 

The first obstacle, obviously, is Dean.

_I don't want you to go._

_Us. You don't want us to go. I won't go unless you come with me._

_We're safe here._

_Dean, we're not safe anywhere. It just hasn't come looking yet._

_Maybe it died. When you shot it, maybe that was enough to kill it._

_Do you really want to take that chance? Can we even afford to?_

_…_

_You said you weren't scared of me. Of what I can do. Was…was that a lie?_

_No. Scared_ for _you, Sam. There's a difference._

_But I have you. Isn't that what you said too?_

_Such a great job I'm doing so far, too._

_Don't, Dean. Don't._

***

It's about a week before Missouri calls.

"Put Sam on the phone," she says without preamble. And, when Dean hesitates, "Don't you sass me, Dean Winchester."

Dean's lips press thin, but he holds out the phone to Sam who looks kind of surprised. Sam gets up from the dinner table, wipes his hands on his jeans and takes the receiver. "Hello?"

Dean feels the tension drain out of Sam like lightning out of the storm when he hears Missouri's rather high voice comes through the line. Dean goes back to the table and Bobby and tries to pretend he can't hear every word Missouri says.

"You boys planning on heading out to Missouri's, then?" Bobby asks, industriously sopping up beef gravy with a torn off piece of biscuit. 

Dean shrugs. 

"Well, you boys are welcome to stay as long as you like, any case. You've been dead useful around the yard and I don't think I've et half so well as since Sam took over the cooking; not since Adah passed and you know what a compliment that is."

Dean nods dully, scraping his own fork around. Every few seconds he glances over at Sam and each time he finds Sam's eyes on him, but the expression in them is hooded, and Dean doesn't know what's going on behind them.

 _This is how it starts_ , he thinks.

***

The second obstacle, equally obvious, is the Impala…which really can't entirely be separated from the subject of Dean.

Sam has learned more about car repair in the last month than he had in his entire life. Not that he was a complete novice before; certain things he could always do, part and parcel of what John Winchester considered necessary knowledge—flats and oil changes, nursing the last gas from a dying car—but most of it had been handled by Dad and Dean while Sam had idled sullenly with a book in the car or under a tree.

But Dad's not here anymore and Sam isn't that irritated and irritable kid. Sam doesn't doubt that Dean could rebuild the Impala all by himself from paper clips and tin cans, but it's something, to be able to do this _with_ Dean, to participate in the resurrection of this piece of their life. It's something to be able to put his hand on the sun-warmed cotton over Dean's shoulder and see that fleeting grin, almost happy. And—oddly enough to Sam—it's something to take these broken pieces and make them whole again, a concrete measure of his time and effort.

The first time Dean turns the key and the Impala growls to life with a rusty, clogged rumble, Sam is sitting next to him in the passenger seat. Dean's eyes drop closed and he smiles—a real smile—with teeth. When his eyes open, the smile is there too. 

He looks over at Sam. He doesn't say anything; he doesn't have to; Sam smiles back just as wide, just as hard, and his heart flutters hard in his chest.

But when Dean looks out the windshield, his fingers clench white-knuckled around the steering wheel and the smile fades a little. 

Dean shuts the car off. He hands the keys to Sam, gets out and goes inside.

Sam climbs out and goes after him.

He finds Dean in the half-bath off the kitchen, hunched over the toilet and dry-heaving, shuddering like he's just run for miles. Sam puts a hand lightly on the small of Dean's back, small circles like Dean would do for him when he was little and sick. "It's okay," he says. "We don't have to go today."

Dean only nods, and spits.

***

The next day, Sam goes out to the field again. Though this time, Dean doesn't have to carry him back, unconscious, Sam still weaves and staggers drunkenly on his return and spends the night puking, eyes hidden behind the makeshift blindfold Dean made him.

"Stop," Dean whispers against Sam's ear, his palm cupped over the sweating nape of Sam's neck. 

"I can't," Sam says and he coughs.

***

_We can't stay here forever._

_I know._

_It will come looking, Dean._

_I said I_ know _._

_We could be safe at Missouri's._

_You don't know that._

_You don't know we won't. It's all just guesswork anyway. Maybe…_

_What?_

_Maybe if I understood…what I am, what I can do, then maybe I could understand why. Why me._

_It wants all of us, Sam._

_Yes, but it specifically wants_ me _, Dean._

_That'll never happen._

_You don't know that._

_I damn well do._

_Dean…you're hurting me. Wait, no…don't pull away. Come here._

_I know we have to go. I know you have to do this. But I don't have to like it._

_No. You don't. But you'll come with me, right?_

_Sam, don't be stupid._

***

Once, Dean had gone into the woods and found a lodge of beavers repairing their dam, damaged by the storm the day before. He'd sat down with his lunch and watched, and then watched the catch basin fill.

He feels like that now; that for all he keeps trying to withstand it, the muddy low-tide bottom of him is slowly being filled up with this filthy river of a life he's no longer sure he wants. A life he's not sure he can survive but is pretty sure isn't merciful enough kill him.

But as usual, the battle lines are clear. Sam _will_ leave. He says that he won't, and Dean wants to believe him, but he also knows that Sam is expecting Dean to not make him choose. Not really. And so Dean will have to follow where Sam takes him, even if it's back into that life.

He wonders if this is how Sam felt, when Dean dragged him away from Stanford.

***

And then, when obstacles one and two are dealt with, Sam is finally forced to admit that he himself is number three.

_Dean-- If I can't do it myself…_

_What?_

_I don't want to end up like Meg. I'd rather die._

_Don't, Sam._

_I just… I need to know, Dean._

_I won't let that happen to you, Sam._

_Promise me!_ Promise. __

_I won't let that happen to you. I promise._

_Okay. Okay. Then let's go._

_Okay._

***

Dean knows he's not the reason they're here, so he's got all the bags and one foot on the stairs when Missouri says sharply, "Dean Winchester, you let your brother go on and take all those bags upstairs. Won't hurt him none. _Might_ put some muscle on 'im, skinny thing." She looks Sam up and down.

Dean looks at Sam, who shrugs. Dean shrugs too and drops the bags with a thump. Missouri opens her mouth and inhale to say something else, then sighs heavily and turns her glare on Sam. "Well? Go on."

Sam gathers up the bags and tromps tiredly up the stairs. His shoulders are bowed a bit and Dean watches him go, worried. Sam hasn't slept more than a handful of minutes in the past couple days and he wasn't doing much better in the days before that. 

"Your room's to the right of the bathroom and Dean's is 'cross the hall. And don't scratch up my floor dumping things willy-nilly!" Missouri calls up after Sam, before turning her dark eyes onto Dean with an expression very like annoyance. "Well," she says. "Let's talk."

Missouri is one of those women that carries her weight naturally, a solidity she was always meant to grow into rather than one foisted upon her, and she moves with that specific soft grace as she turns and leads Dean through the bamboo curtain into her parlor. It looks the same as it did the last time—maybe a few more plants—and it smells sweet, women's perfume and sugary pastry and Nag Champa incense.

She keeps her back to him for a long moment, the line of her neck tight beneath the frizzy curls of her hair. Dean doesn't sit and though he wants to lean, he doesn't do that either. He imagines she'd have a punch like a hammer, if it came to it.

"I want to get one thing clear, right off the bat." Missouri turns around, chafing her hands together and not meeting Dean's eyes. "I don't want you…messing around while you're here, Dean."

Dean's eyebrows go up, his hands spread in helpless incomprehension.

"Don't you go giving me that innocent face!" Missouri points one stubby finger at him. It's shaking and he wonders why. "You know what I mean. You leave your brother alone while you're under my roof. I'm not going to be having with no monkey business between the two of you."

Dean feels his eyebrows shoot up so high he thinks they might fly right off his face and he chokes hard, his heart thumping too fast suddenly, his blood transmuted to gasoline. He coughs and sputters and wonders if he's going to throw up.

_Oh God, she knows. How can she know? Of course she knows, stupid. Oh God. Oh God._

"You know, I thought better of you, Dean. I really did." Missouri shakes her head, troubled. "When you and Sam were here last, I could smell it on you then. That…that _want_. But it was old and I was willing to let it go. But now…" He lips purse. "It's _sick_ ; your own brother."

Dean's hands fist at his sides and he turns his face away. They hadn't wanted to stop on the way here, so they'd pulled over in a rest stop and slept a couple hours curled up together in the back seat. It had been ridiculous, cramped and uncomfortable, and Dean's teeth sort of ached where Sam had backwards head-butted him. His throat burns hot and his stomach burns acid.

"You look at me, Dean Winchester and shame on you," Missouri hisses and Dean swallows, bringing his eyes up to meet her gaze. His jaw aches, it's clenched so tight. "You're the oldest. You should know better."

And really, isn't this exactly what he's told himself a million times, even after he and Sam agreed to…whatever the hell it is they agreed to? His brother. It was one thing to try and hide this from their father, in the handful of hours they'd been reunited; entirely another to hide it from someone like Missouri, who—apparently—already knows way too much. The fact that it needs to be hidden at all just shows how fucked up it—and he—is.

"You _do_ know better. And what you do when you're away from here is your business, I expect—though I think it would _kill_ your father to see it if he were here—but I'm not having it. While you and Sam are under my roof, you _will_ obey me in this."

The gasoline in his veins bursts into flame and heat—shame, anger—rages through him. His teeth shut hard and pain explodes through his skull. It's a flash fire though, consuming everything in its wake and quickly swallowed by a black and sucking despair.

 _No,_ he thinks. _No, don't take him from me too._

But even when he had a voice, who ever listened to him when he said dumbass emo shit like that?

"Everything all right in here?" Half the time Dean forgets the catlike silence in which Sam moves. Sam appears in the doorway, looking from Missouri to Dean and back curiously. 

The house is warmer than they're used to; Sam's already shed his hoodie and over shirt. He looks almost as crumpled and sweated out as his worn clothes, skin faded almost the same gray as his T-shirt. His eyes glitter oddly pale in the rings around his eyes and Dean feels everything in him deflate, looking at Sam. _Seeing_ how bad Sam looks. 

_Take care of your brother, Dean._

Sam looks back at Dean, a question in his expression, and Dean feels something inside him delicately rip and bleed and something else harden. _It's not losing him. It's not losing Sam. It's just giving up something you had no business taking in the first place. He needs this, needs what Missouri can teach him. He doesn't_ need _you. Not like that._

"It's fine," Missouri insists, tugging her cardigan around herself, and Dean shrugs and nods.

***

"Sam and I are going to get better acquainted," Missouri informs Dean. She ushers Sam towards one of the chairs. "You'll find a list and some money on the table in the hall. I've got dinner planned for six, so don't be all day about it."

Dean nods and goes. Sam frowns, something about that silent acquiescence tugging at his mind. 

"Sam," Missouri says sharply and he turns back to her.

"You didn't… You don't have to be so harsh with him." 

Missouri's mouth crooks. "That boy needs something useful to do with hisself," she says, nodding towards where Dean disappeared. "He's a mess. Leaving him at loose ends and coddling him isn't going to make your brother get any better, Sam, and don't you mistake practical handling for a lack of care. I've known you boys longer than you've known yourselves."

"I didn't mean…" Sam stops, floundering in the tangle of him and Dean, so much more tangled than it was a month ago, or six. "I didn't mean to be disrespectful. But…Dean's hurting real bad right now." He looks back towards the bamboo curtain and the darkness of the hall beyond and it hits him. 

There'd been no expression on Dean's face as he'd walked out. Not outrage, not anger, not even a twitch of his eyebrows. There had only been rather blank acceptance, and even damaged, that just wasn't Dean at all, especially to being summarily ordered around by anyone other than Dad.

Through the renewed ache of missing their father, Sam wonders again what Missouri said to Dean while he'd been upstairs. Wonders what's going on in Dean's mind.

"Well, I expect you both are," Missouri agrees, fixing Sam with a sharp look. "And I'm sure that whatever it is that killed your father will have no problem at all waiting a proper period of mourning before coming to trouble you again."

The ache in Sam's throat renews itself, and he looks aside.

"Look, Sam, I know you want to help your brother." Missouri leans forward, elbows resting on her knees. "That's natural. But Dean's the oldest and he can look after himself. Been doing it for years."

Though Sam's sure Missouri doesn't mean it that way, under his skin he flinches at the reminder of exactly _how much_ Dean's had to look after himself. "You don’t understand."

"Oh, I understand. You think you and Dean are the only one who ever lost someone?" Missouri demands. "A parent?" 

Sam shifts in his chair, his knees aching from the long trip. "No, of course not."

"Of course not." Missouri's lips purse up and she folds her arms under her breasts. Then she softens with a soundless sigh. "Look, Sam. I know you boys are hurt and hurting. I do. And I wish I could sit here and pat you on the head and feed you…chicken soup and lemon bars and make it all go away, but I'm not that woman and this isn't that kind of life. This is a hard, ugly, _cruel_ life, and I'm sorry for that, I am, but I'll settle for just keeping you and your brother alive, if I can."

Sam looks down at his hands, cupped one within the other between his knees. There are lots of things he could say, lots of things he'd like to say, and many more he doesn't even know where to start with. "Thank you," is what he settles on, thoroughly inadequate but the closest he can come. "You didn't have to do this."

"I'll be honest with you. My powers aren't very strong. Never have been. Oh, I'm good at what I do, but…well. Even if I could do the things you do, I couldn't do the things you do. Do you know what I mean?"

Sam nods. "Yeah." 

"Good." Missouri rubs her palms on her knees. "Well, then, let's get started. Tell me about what you can do."

**

Dean sits in the parking lot of the Kroeger's, rubbing the line of his sternum hard. He feels too hot, even with the windows rolled down, and his chest hurts like he's strained something.

 _You leave your brother alone,_ she'd said. And, _I could smell it on you then._

_You're the oldest. You should know better._

And on the other hand, Sam's voice. 

_So I'm yours, okay? I'm yours. But that means you're mine too._ And, _Maybe if I understood…what I am, what I can do, then maybe I could understand why. Why me._

Sam needs to be here.

And that means Dean needs to be here.

 _Jesus, Dean_ he thinks, _it's just_ sex _. You can live without sex. People do._

The ache in his chest sinks deeper, burns harder. He's having a hard time catching his breath. Dean leans his head against the steering wheel and massages harder.

***

The headache is nowhere near as bad as any of the others, but it still feels like someone took a length of pipe to his temporal lobes and he's trembling uncontrollably.

"You go on upstairs," Missouri says, patting him on the shoulder. "Try and sleep. I'll send up some dinner when it's ready."

"Can you send up Dean, when he gets back?" Sam feels oddly shy asking the question. Things had been pretty informal at Bobby's and they'd been careful to rumple up the camp bed they'd moved into Sam's room every night to look like Dean actually slept in it…but he had the feeling things wouldn't be that simple here. "He's…he's really good with my headaches. It's like…acupuncture, acupressure…something like that."

"Of course I will," Missouri agrees. Then, as Sam puts his first foot heavily on the stairs, she touches his arm. "I… I want you to concentrate, while you're here, Sam; put your studies first."

He smiles at her, puzzled. "Of course." Then, feeling like maybe that isn't enough, he adds, "Missouri, I'm totally grateful for everything you're doing."

"Pssht!" She slaps his shoulder and clicks her teeth at him, smiling in return. "That's not what I mean. I just…well, I want you to _focus_."

He's starting to sway a little on his feet and colors are switching from washed out grays to painful oversaturation and back, which is a pretty good sign that if he's not in the dark and flat on his back pretty soon, he's going to be sick all over Missouri's carpet runner. "Well, yeah," he agrees. 

Suddenly Missouri seems flustered. "Oh look at me, just rattling on when I know your head must be ready to just fall off your shoulders." She makes shooing gestures. "Go on."

"Thanks Missouri."

"Don't mention it."

The trudge up the stairs seems to take forever, his legs rubber-bandy and weak. He feels much like he used to after a really rough all day sparring session with Dad and Dean. He's got just about enough energy to toe off his sneakers, dig out his blindfold from his duffle and go face down on the bed.

***

Some of the problem, Dean discovers, is not just Sam. 

It's everything; it's being out in the world again naked and shredded. It's the girl at the register checking you out and flirting outrageously and realizing you have no recollection of what to do about it, when flirting used to be like breathing. But it's gone. Just…gone. The circuits are cut. It's going to the _botanica_ and having to pantomime and point at the items on Missouri's list because you still can't find your voice with other people. People who aren't Sam. It's the barely veiled sense of panic, _all the time_ , because you expect every face to turn to you with eyes suddenly turned black as pitch, every car to suddenly swerve and kamikaze into you.

His memories are swimmy and evasive, shrouded in a massive clinging darkness that he knows was his death…or could have been. He doesn't remember much of what he said to the demon or what the demon said to him, though Sam's told him as much as _he_ recalls…which isn't much either. He doesn't remember getting from the cabin to the car, or most of the ride. What he _does_ remember, mostly, are sounds; the gunshot, the run of Sam's voice, soothing and persuasive over an undercurrent of fear, and then, finally, the explosive slam of the truck into the Impala.

He remembers that sound best of all, mostly nights when he's on the edge of sleep and it comes like freight train up out of the darkness. It hovers on the edge of his consciousness every moment he's behind the Impala's wheel since that first day she came back to life under his hands.

In some ways, he's glad Sam's not with him as he drives white-knuckled, carefully and within the speed limit—actually a couple miles _below_ —all the way back to Missouri's.

***

The first thing he knows is that it's dark and he's alone.

Sam wakes, shooting upright in a squeak of mattress springs, flailing blindly for something, anything to orient himself. "Dean?"

There's no answer, no soothing touch of a broad hand against the small of his back.

Belatedly, he remembers the blindfold and fumbles it from his head. The combination of moon and street light that fills the room seems bright after utter darkness, but it's not like Sam needs it to know he's all alone.

He hates the way that word echoes off the breaks and jags inside him; alone. Even when he went to Stanford, it wasn't with the expectation of aloneness; he was running _to_ something as much as he was running away. In Chicago, Sam glimpsed for the first time how deep that fear goes in Dean, a kind of revelation in and of itself; but Sam's never admitted to anyone, including Jess and Dean, his own sick terror at the prospect of being the last, the only.

Breathing in the air of a room that still smells faintly of dust and Mr. Clean, Sam puts his face in his hands and practices the controlled inhale-exhale that Missouri instructed him in just hours ago.

 _This is going to be a hard concept to swallow, because you_ are _your father's son, but the first thing you have to do, the first thing anyone has to do, gifted or not, is get in touch with who they are. And the first, easiest way to do that is through your breath._

When his heart pounds a little less stridently in his chest and he doesn't feel like he's starving for air with every in- and exhalation, Sam lifts his head. The room doesn't have a clock; he fishes his cell phone from his pocket. It's eleven-thirty. 

There's a tray on the dresser; Sam scrubs a hand through his hair and gets to his feet. He expects to be shaky, gripping the bed's footboard in taut hands, but really, he's in much better shape than he'd thought he'd be. 

_Hooray for finding someone who knows what the fuck they're doing,_ he thinks, and goes to the tray. Two sandwiches under a napkin, an apple and a pear. A can of soda and a small teapot. There's a note on a postcard-sized rectangle, but he can't read it without more light. He doesn't feel hungry, though; he leaves it all and opens the door. 

The whole house is dark; the doors to Missouri's and Dean's rooms shut. Sam crosses the hall to Dean's room and slips through the door. Dean has his blinds down and the room faces away from the street; it's much darker in here and Sam tries to rebuild the layout from memory. He trips over Dean's duffle and almost falls onto the bed—and Dean—but he's otherwise without mishap. 

"Dean?" Dean hasn't moved, hasn't stirred, even though the sound of Sam tripping normally would have been enough to wake him. Unease runs through Sam and he wonders if this is another dream—a nightmare—and when (if) he touches Dean, he'll find him dead. Dead as Mom, dead as Jess, dead as Dad. Wonders if he'll find out he really _is_ the last and only.

But Dean is warm when Sam's fumbling fingers run across his broad muscled back; Sam feels the movement of breath. He climbs on the bed—which is narrow—and pushes his way against Dean's back, his hand sliding up Dean's thigh and hip to eventually curve over Dean's waist.

"Don't." 

The word is loud in the stillness, reverberating back to Sam through Dean's flesh and bone. "Don't what?"

"Don't…" Dean stirs, shoving Sam's hand away and the bed rocks. Dean sighs. "Go back to bed, Sam."

"Come with me," Sam says, shoving his face up against the nape of Dean's neck, lipping the spiky-soft hairs there. Dean smells like sleep-sweat and the last lingering traces of motel shampoo. Sam closes his eyes and breathes it in. "Why didn't you come before? Didn't Missouri tell you? My bed's bigger anyway."

The bed is hardly bigger than the Impala's back seat; plastered against Dean's back, he feels Dean inhale, unsteady. But what Dean says is, "I'm tired."

And this feels familiar in ways Sam doesn't want to contemplate. "Dean—"

"I'm…I'm just tired. Please, Sam."

Sam doesn't know if Dean's ever said 'please' to him in a context not sexual. Logically, he knows Dean must have at some point, but he can't think of one. Not in the context of Dean.

"O-okay," he says finally, reluctantly, disentangling himself from Dean. "Yeah, Dean. Sure."

He trips over the duffel again, on his way out.

***

Dean doesn't sleep.

He thinks about getting up, breaking down the guns, cleaning and reassembling them; it's been a long time since he's done that in the dark. He thinks about going across the hall. He thinks about going out for a run in the predawn cool; he and Sam are both woefully out of shape, only up to six or seven miles. He thinks about crawling into Sam's bed and biting down on the nape of Sam's neck where Sam likes it most and hearing him moan. 

In the end, he forces himself to lie still until the sun rises, chafing with inactivity.

He's barely out of the shower—and less than a step out of the bathroom—when Missouri presents him with another list. "This one's your chores," she says. Her tone and expression are annoyed, but that's not so different from the usual. He can't tell if she knows of Sam's late night visit, or if she approves, that Dean sent Sam away. 

He takes the list, blotting the paper with dampness. _…clean the gutters, rake the lawn, replace the basement railing…_ He doesn't get any further before she shoves a second piece of paper at him. "And these are errands I need you to run." This list is twice as long as yesterday's. "Money's down on the hall table."

Dean nods and takes that list from her too. His stomach curdles a little at the thought of going out there again, into the noise and jostle and the constant flux of _people_ , but he's just as glad for something to do with himself and it's something he can tangibly offer, to pay their way.

Missouri's looking at him like she expects something else, so he looks up shrugs and nods again, willing. Strangely, Missouri's lips tighten up and her eyes darken further, chocolate to near-black. "Well, go on!" she says snappishly, shooing him. "Go on and put some clothes on before you catch your death of cold. I swear, sometimes I don't know what you boys are thinking."

Dean hitches his towel up a little higher on his waist and thinks, _Yeah. Back atcha._

"I heard that!" Missouri says, halfway down the stairs.

***

Sam dreams of rain. 

Not California rain, misty and muzzy, fits and starts of tepid wetness and only the occasional downpour that never lasts longer than an hour. He dreams of rain like in the Midwest, torrential and freezing, falling unchecked out of midnight skies, soaking him to the skin in seconds and chilling him to the bone. 

He can't see a damn thing in it, not more than a couple feet in front of his face. Thunder grumbles sullen, echoing off into unknown distances. He doesn't know where he is, doesn't know where anyone else is. He's lost. He wanders through mud and rain for what feels like hours, calling his brother's name. 

He never finds Dean. Dean never finds him.

Sam wakes up shivering, curled into a tiny ball. His bed is still empty and he can't remember the last time he woke from a dream and Dean wasn't there. Tugging the cast aside blankets and sheets to his chin, teeth still chattering, Sam thinks, _At least no one was dying this time._

***

Dean is measuring the wood for Missouri's sprung back step when Sam comes and presses him into the siding, opening Dean's mouth with forceful lips and following slickly with his tongue.

Dean's eyes close and he sags against the vinyl, opening his mouth wider and chasing Sam's tongue with his own. Sam's hair is sweaty-damp under his fingers; he smells like exertion and faintly sweet from the incense that permeates Missouri's parlor.

_I don't want you…messing around while you're here, Dean._

Dean stiffens and then pushes Sam lightly—and then when Sam resists, more strongly—off of him, turning his face away. "Don't."

Sam glances up at the house, a half-smile on his face. "She's got a client. She won't know."

Dean looks at Sam. Sam can be just monumentally stupid sometimes. "Doesn't matter."

"Dean—" Sam's fingers tighten on Dean's shirt. "Why are you doing this? Why…why are you like this?"

Dean shakes his head. "Because she'll _know._ " He puts his hands over Sam's and forces them down, leaving behind tight bunched creases in his T-shirt. "Psychic, remember?" He gives Sam the best _you slack-jawed yokel_ look he can muster and slides sideways where Sam won't be so close to him. He tries not to think about how long it's been since he's had Sam's hand on his cock, and fails mostly.

Sam looks chagrined and sheepish and then thoughtful. Dean hates it when Sam looks thoughtful; it never bodes well. "So…what? We're just not going to touch—at all—until after we leave here?"

Dean shrugs, not meeting Sam's eyes. Already he wants to scrub his mouth, afraid Missouri will see the kisses there like smeared lipstick. _Sam needs to be here,_ he reminds himself. "That's the idea."

"Dean—" Sam reaches for him. His fingertips dance over Dean's arm as Dean shies away.

"Still incest, right?" Dean growls more harshly than he means to, and Sam flinches back. Dean's shoulders ache; he makes a conscious effort to lower and straighten them. "I got chores."

He leaves the saw and the wood and Sam and exits the side gate, groping for the Impala's keys.

***

After that, things sort of fall into a routine, though not one Sam ever got to vote on. 

Dean is up and out the door before dawn, running the streets of Lawrence. Sam keeps planning on waking up early enough to run with him but the sessions with Missouri suck him dry. Most nights, he's nodding into his dinner and it's all he can do to make it up the stairs and into his room. He thinks his belt buckle might be permanently imprinted on his lower belly. Add to that his ongoing dreams—always the same flooding thunderstorms, the same thick, grasping mud and the sky like a bruise—and sleep becomes more of a rumor than something he actually _has_. When he does sleep, it's a hard crash into profound unconsciousness and by the time he manages to flounder his way to the surface again, Dean's gone.

If it bothers Dean to be here, Sam can't tell. Truthfully, he can't tell much about Dean at all anymore; after his run, there are always the endless rounds of chores and errands, keeping him out of the way, out of sight. On the rare occasion they are in the same place at the same time, Sam finds himself emulating Dean's old behavior; angling and shifting to keep Dean in his sightline all the time. 

He makes excuses to touch Dean whenever possible; stretching his long legs under the table until his knee is touching Dean's, rubbing shoulders at the sink while Dean washes the dishes, once even ambushing and pelting Dean with snowballs while Dean shoveled Missouri's walks until Dean chased him down and tackled him. The wrestling match that followed was hot, sweaty, freezingly cold and absolutely the most fun he'd had in a long time…at least until Missouri came out to yell at them both for acting like children.

But Dean laughed. Out loud. And Dean smiled, if only for a little while. And if afterwards, Sam felt shaky on his legs and had to quietly go throw up in the upstairs bathroom? Well. It was still totally worth it.

 _I miss you,_ he'd said to Dean once, in those intense days with their father, on the trail of Meg and the demon. And he'd meant it. But now he's not sure he really knew what missing Dean was like. It's like starving. It feels like starving to death.

***

Parts of it get easier. 

Emmy, the Kroeger clerk, has apparently drawn the conclusion he's gay and has resolved on the sympathetic friend role instead, clucking, "He's not treating you right, hon. You should find someone who's going to appreciate you."

Dean's learned the right combination of smile and wink to convey there are compensations for his supposed servitude and Emmy will just slap him on the arm and laugh through the bright green wad of her gum.

Olivia, who owns the _botanica_ with her husband Gervese, will make him sit and feed him big dishes of red beans and rice with hunks of golden cornbread the size of his fist, muttering in Spanish that he doesn't eat enough as she goes through the shelves, packaging the herbs from Missouri's list. Her daughter, Natalia, will sit in the wicker chair opposite him, petting the big black tomcat that seems to be her shadow and telling him—in great detail—what the ants and bees and birds have been doing since the last time he was there. She's very interested in dinosaurs as well, and Dean learns a lot about how to tell a stegosaur from a brontosaur (which is really an apatosaur). 

Marnie, at the Home Depot, never does stop hitting on him and he again remembers how to take it in stride when she pats his ass or hangs onto his arm. How to waggle his eyebrows and grin and dance away, waving his finger at her in mock reproach so that she giggles and blushes the same shade as her dyed red hair.

He starts to remember that he was good at this once. Not as good as Sam, certainly; kid's got _trust me_ written through him like a tree's rings; but enough to get by. To get along. 

By the time he gets back to Missouri's, Sam's usually conked out in his 'before dinner nap', but sometimes, if Missouri's with a client, if it's been an especially good day, or an especially bad one, he'll sit cross legged on the floor next to the bed and tell the sleeping—and often snoring—Sam about it all.

***

Missouri's as much as admitted she doesn't know what to do about his psychokinesis. And so they concentrate on his visions and things that are not specific to any gift—breathing, meditation, the uses and properties of certain herbs, or constellations or times of season to focus, refine and strengthen the mind or spirit, drugs that can temporarily boost a gift, others that can muddle or bind them, or make them skew in unexpected ways.

"The key to control is giving your gift something to focus on, or through."

"Oh God. Are we talking crystal balls here?" The headache that never _really_ goes away is inching up into his consciousness and even though he's only been up for three hours, he feels like he could go back down for a _week_. For a moment, though, he imagines what Dean would have to say about crystal balls and it makes him smile. 

Missouri just looks at him, eyebrows raised in silent _are you done yet?_

"Sorry." He waves a vague hand at her. "It's just…this isn't what I thought my life was going to be like."

Missouri softens and puts one hand over his. Her fingers are far warmer than his. "It never is what you think it's going to be like, Sam. Not for any of us. I'm not talking about just folks with power, here. And you can make all the plans in the world and it doesn't make a spit's worth of difference. That's life."

"I _like_ plans," Sam says, and he's aware that he sounds both plaintive and whiny, but he _feels_ both and he's had enough of being stoic and Winchester-y at the moment.

And Missouri just laughs at him.

He's practicing alone when it happens. She has him trying out different mediums; last time it was fire, today it's water. He looks down into the lettuce colored glass bowl and tries not to let his mind wander, tries not to be bored.

There's always a moment now; a moment he can feel himself slide out of the way and his gift slide into place. He doesn't know how to describe it, other than in terms of training with their father and each other; the moment when he shoots—bow or gun—and knows it's exactly right, exactly where he meant it to be. The moment he _sees_ the hole in Dean's defenses and breaks right through it to put Dean on his ass.

In the water, something flashes, like a spangle of sunshine. His breath faltering just a bit, Sam leans forward over the bowl and feels something—something that feels like the center of his brain—flutter ticklishly. It's only a couple images, none of them clear—a shifting darkness, a very young girl with dark hair and huge eyes crying and stumbling over broken ground, a flash of something either white or silver, blade or tooth…

Sam gropes for the edges of the vision, trying to see more and more clearly, when he feels a secondary presence around him/with him in the unreal space between his physical self and the reality of his vision. A sense of cold, a sense of sentient malice, like spoiled milk and rotted blood. Ice creeps from the base of Sam's spine into his hairline, raising every hair on his body as it goes. He feels it looking for him, slinking and slithering through the not-space looking for _him_.

_Here. Make the gun float to you there, Psychic Boy…_

Horror and recognition are doubled fists that slam into him at the same time; Sam recoils so hard and so reflexively that he feels the chair fly back from the table and his body leave the chair. He hits the breakfront on the far wall, shattering the glass, the brass handles digging into his back and then scraping the rest of the way as he slides down.

"Sam? _Sam_?" Lying on the floor, flailing unsteadily like a turtle trying to rock itself upright—an image that makes him grin a little woozily—Sam hears the back door crash open and Dean tear through, all clomping boots and desperate urgency. He hears the chairs squeak against the wooden floor in the parlor and a second and third set of footfalls as Missouri and her client come to see what all the fuss is about.

"Oh my God," Missouri gasps, and Sam tries to raise his head to tell her it's all right, he's okay. He's not having too much luck with that, though. "Get him up. No, I'll clean all this up, just… Go on; get him upstairs, help him get cleaned up." She murmurs excuses to her client as their feet tap heavy, rapid rhythms towards the front of the house.

Dean's fingers drift over him, plucking and searching. Sam drags his eyes open and sees Dean bent over him, a jagged shard of bloody glass in his fingers. Dean's eyes are wild, panicked, and Sam exerts every bit of strength he can muster to reach up and put his hand on Dean's knee. "M'okay," he says, far less clearly aloud than it sounded it his head.

Dean nods curtly, eyes blinking rapidly and hot as he pulls more pieces of glass out of Sam's skin. After a moment, Missouri comes to help and the two of them get him on his feet.

"M'okay," he says again, but no one's believing him, and really, he's not sure he believes it himself. He feels really really tired. Missouri steps back. Dean hooks one of Sam's arms over his shoulders and Sam starts to shift his weight forward, thinking Dean's going to walk him up the stairs. Then Dean bends a little and suddenly Sam is up, off the ground entirely. Tall as Sam is, he didn't think Dean could do that.

"You just swept me off my feet," Sam slurs, amused. He puts his head down on Dean's shoulder and closing his eyes again. "Dean Winchester, you're my hero…"

Dean snorts and Sam lets himself _slide_.

***

"I want your word, Dean Winchester," Missouri says, coming into the bedroom and shaking her finger at him.

Dean looks a question at her, opening his hands and turning them up. Water from the bloody washrag in his right runs down his forearm.

"I don't think he should be left alone tonight. I don't know what happened, but…nothing like that _should_ have happened for what he was doing. It's not right. And it worries me. But I want your word, Dean, your sincere and honest word— _no foolishness._ "

It sort of bugs him how she keeps using these euphemisms—foolishness, monkey business, silliness—like it's a passing whim, like he hasn't fought and fucked and bled—way too much of all of them—to try and be and feel anything different. Like he's just messing around. But he's gotten better at bricking all that shit up where she can't just pick it up like a used condom. So he just puts the rag back in the basin, sits down on the rickety old straight backed chair he'd pulled up to the bedside and nods, head down.

"Some day, God willing, you'll see I'm right about this," Missouri says and pats him on the shoulder. "You go on and keep an eye on your brother tonight." She sighs. "God knows you aren't gonna sleep no way."

***

Sam dreams of rain, falling from the darkened sky in endless waves.

He dreams of mud, thick and semiliquid and cold, deepening and dragging him down like quicksand. It's impossible to fight against, his lungs filling with water as he breathes in the rain, his body becoming stiff and uncooperative as the chill from the mud sinks into his bones.

"Sam!"

Sam opens his eyes and gasps, arching up out of darkness.

"Sam?" There is a shadow above him with Dean's voice; there's a hand, warm and ringed cupping the crown of his head. 

Sam shifts and rolls sideways and his face presses against body-heated denim and the solid thigh underneath. Sam throws his arm over those legs and breathes, "Dean."

"Dream? Or vision?" Dean's hand moves from his head to his neck, kneading. Sam groans softly and pushes his face deeper into Dean's leg.

"Dream, I think," Sam answers. "I don't know. It's…it's always the _same_ dream."

"How long?" Dean's other hand joins the first, vibrating and twisting knots apart, knots Sam feels like he's been carrying for _days_ and it's _Dean_ , Dean touching him, Dean's skin on his, Dean's smell pressed against his face and he's not cold anymore, he's warm. He's warm all the way through.

"Since…since we got here, pretty much," Sam winces as Dean rolls over a particularly sore and stubborn spot, radiating pain-pleasure all the way to Sam's fingertips. 

"Was… Is that what happened? Downstairs?" Dean's fingers find lines of soreness on Sam's shoulders, the backs of his arms, and Sam remembers the flight across the dining room, remembers hitting the breakfront.

"No," Sam answers shortly. "That was something else." He reaches up and runs his hands along the ripples of Dean's belly, slides across the rigid curve of pectoral, up the alternating rough-smooth of Dean's throat and hooks his fingertips over the damp silk of Dean's bottom lip. He worms his fingers into Dean's mouth until Dean's lips part enough to let him in, tongue lapping warmly against Sam's skin.

Dean's breath changes, and Sam feels his body coil to move away and Sam risks the pain he knows will follow to slither his other arm around Dean's waist. "Not sex," he says quickly, hoping to head Dean off at the pass. He slips his fingers out of Dean's mouth, outlines the rough broken skin of Dean's lip, spit-wet, then lets his hand fall. "Okay? Not sex. Just… Just be here. Just stay. Please?" His voice starts to shake and jokingly he says, "C'mon Dean, help a brother out; I already feel like the girl here…"

Dean flinches and Sam knows he said something wrong, without knowing what. But Dean bends down to Sam's ear and mutters, "That's because you _are_ a girl," exasperated as he slides down next to Sam.

***

"But Dean, it is Christmas," Olivia chides. "No one should be alone on Christmas." She hands him a plate with a hunk of caramel cake as big as a softball with a look that tells him he'd better finish the whole thing. 

Dean does a complicated shrug and grimace that should in theory indicate that he's not alone and that Christmas really isn't his gig anyway.

"I grill some mean adobo chicken," Gervese says, a loupe held to his eye as he examines an old book spread out across the counter. "And my Tia Petra's tamales are not to be missed. Pork, chicken, _and_ sweet." He makes a kissing noise.

Dean flaps his hands and waggles his eyebrows, his new shorthand for _I'm flattered really, and that sounds quite tempting, but I think I'll be fine getting righteously drunk in the nearest bar, thank you._

Olivia clicks her tongue at him reproachfully, and Natalia copies her in soprano. "Dean. It is Christmas. It's a time for family. Bring your brother. I will invite my cousin Dolce."

"No," Gervese groans, looking up finally. "Not Dolce. She's awful."

Olivia rounds on him, hands on her hips. "What's wrong with Dolce?"

"Other than the fact that she is a…wolverine who chews up men and spits them out? Other than the fact that she wears dresses smaller than Natalia's? Other than the fact that she wears enough perfume to knock down a grown man at fifty pa…"

Olivia holds up her hands, her lips twitching. "All right, all right; not Dolce. Although…" She eyes Dean speculatively and Dean sinks back into his chair, eyes wide and horrified. "No," Olivia sighs regretfully. "I suppose not." Then the twinkle reawakens in her black eyes. "Of course, that means that you and your brother _have_ to come."

***

"I don't know." Dean won't meet his eyes, kicking the corner of the kitchen cabinet idly with the toe of his boot like it's the most interesting thing in the world. "Some kind of Christmas barbeque." 

Sam shifts his stance and crosses his arms, trying to reconcile the idea of a barbeque in late December, as well as the idea that Dean said yes. "And…who are these people again?"

"Just some people. They own the _botanica_ off Fourth Street," Dean mutters in the same dull ungracious tone of voice. "They're making tamales. Look, do you want to go or not?"

Sam shrugs, though a part of him is already sort of excited at the prospect. While Dean's been all over town, Sam's hardly left the house since their arrival. The idea of getting out for a little while, of just sitting and doing something not related to gifts or revenge or fear… "What the hell? Yeah, let's go."

***

The back door of Olivia and Gervese's house opens and shuts with a rusty squeak of hinges and a soft slam. "What're you doing out here?" Sam asks. "It's freezing."

Dean looks up at Sam, smiles faintly. "Hiding."

Sam looks back into Olivia and Gervese's house. Dean can still hear the dull roar of conversation and laughter from where he sits on the steps; the house is golden bright with lamplight, shining from every window and rivaling the multicolored glow of the decorative lights wreathing the eaves and railings. "Yeah, I can get that," Sam says finally, before coming to sit next to Dean, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. Sam huddles deeper into his jacket, hands tucked into his armpits. "Man, there's a lot of people in there."

Dean nods, fists tucked into his own pockets. Missouri hadn't wanted them to come, regarding Dean with cold suspicious eyes, but even she wasn't immune to Sam's charm when he applied himself. Which Sam had. For as much as Sam claims to crave stability, he's been cabin-feverish. Which is probably the reason Dean suggested coming in the first place. As a rule, the Winchesters didn't _do_ Christmas and they tended not to bunk with anyone around the holidays, preferring to be off on their own without reminders, sympathy or pity. This is an entirely new experience, the bustle and bicker of sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, grandparents and one wizened great grandmother who looks old enough to be an Incan mummy until she winks and grins. 

The infamous Dolce made an appearance after all, and spent most of the night trying to corner either Sam or Dean under the sprig of mistletoe pinned up between the kitchen and living room. Dean hadn't been doing too badly until Sam backed up against him, holding him in place long enough for Dolce to get her lime green hook-nailed hands on him. "She slipped me _tongue_ , man," he says, aggrieved.

Sam laughs, just like he did then and nudges Dean in the shoulder, rocking him sideways. "Aw, poor baby. Want Sammy to kiss it better?"

 _Yes,_ Dean thinks, but what he growls instead is, "Asshole."

"Hey." Sam's voice deepens and flexes, warming into the pure sex register that plunges straight to Dean's cock and makes it twitch. Sam reaches over and grabs Dean's jaw, turning it towards him. "C'mere."

"Natalia?" The door and screen open and they spring apart. Olivia comes out onto the porch, shivering in her thin and almost sleeveless crepe party dress. She looks at them, not really registering either of them. Her expression is worried and slightly wild. "Have either of you seen Natalia?"

Dean shakes his head and so does Sam. They both get to their feet. Dean's ass is cold and halfway to numb. "What's wrong?" Sam asks. The party noise inside has changed; Dean hears voices calling "Natalia? Na _tal_ ia" over and over, and the clomp and bustle of many feet.

Olivia's hands flutter like agitated birds. "I can't find her. She's not in bed and I can't find her. She doesn't… She's a good girl. She doesn't wander." Olivia is shaking.

Dean catches Sam's eye. Sam looks back—the same look—and Dean feels something slide into place under his skin. Something he hadn't even noticed was missing until it was back. He feels very aware of the crisp sharp smells of _night_ and _snow_ , more aware of the darkness, spread wide and open at his back. There is a Glock in the glove compartment of the car, and a couple shotguns in the trunk, he remembers.

Sam puts his arm around Olivia's shoulders. "It's too cold for you to be out here," he says. "Me and Dean already have our coats on; we'll take a look around. Go inside. She's probably just hiding somewhere… Is there anything missing? Was the window open?"

"I…" Olivia drags against Sam, glazed with worry, her eyes roving across the yard desperately. "There was a draft…that's why I went to check. Oh, Sam…" She looks up into Sam's face, her skin very pale against the dark of her hair and Sam's overcoat. "Please tell me we're going to find her. That she's all right."

"She's fine," Sam says reassuringly, coaxing her back towards the warm heart of the house again. "We'll find her and then you'll laugh about how worried you were. Go on. Me and Dean will look."

Dean's already down the back stairs, circling around the house to Natalia's window. Sam's much better at the shoulder to cry on part, even when Dean was more…articulate. Dean's got a penlight in one of the inside pockets of his coat; he fishes it out and pans it over the siding and the ground. The ground is too frozen to hold much of a track, but the snow under Natalia's window is churned and muddy, nothing clear. There are scratches on the siding, bright metal winking back in the weak light. The windowsill is over his head, a tough reach but not impossible.

"Hey," Sam comes around the corner of the house. He walks up to Dean, brushes his lips and tongue over Dean's fast and casual as anything while his thumb and forefinger grip Dean's chin, and then he turns to look up at Natalia's window. "What've you got?"

Dean points out the scratches and the scuffle of tracks under the window. Sam puts his face close to the scratches, reaches out to adjust Dean's flashlight hand to a better angle, his fingers lingering. Finally, Sam reaches out and brushes his other hand over the marks lightly and carefully. His eyes slip shut and Dean sees him shiver.

When Sam's eyes open again, his face looks sharper, the bones clearer. "It…" he says, and Dean feels his heart skip a beat and then speed. _An Apatosaurus could eat leaves from as high as seventeen feet off the ground,_ he thinks, cold and clear. _It weighed thirty-three tons, and traveled in families. (Herds, mija) Herds. Mommies, daddies, and babies, all together._ "It has her."

There is a Glock in the glove compartment and a couple of shotguns in the trunk. Dean's got a knife down the back of his pants and another in his boot. "It's dead," he says softly. "C'mon."

***

"I…" Sam feels color and heat climb up in his face, especially with Olivia and Gervese's entire extended family looking at him. "Do you have something of hers? Something I can take with me?"

Somewhere in the back, he hears _Abuela_ Selene ask loudly _"Que?"_ and a couple murmured _brujo_ s and wonders if it's possible to spontaneously combust of sheer shame. It's one thing to pull off the half-cracked impersonations that Dean makes him suffer through—policemen, firemen, government agents—and a far different one to stand up in front of all these people and declare himself— _him_ , Sam Winchester—to be a psychic. Or something.

"Will it help?" Olivia's put a sweater on over her dress, thick and hand-knitted. She huddles into it like she's still cold, Gervese's arm around her and her body half turned into his. She looks up at Sam and the fierce wild hope in her eyes turns his fingers cold.

"I…" Dean puts his hand, subtle and hidden by the closeness of their bodies, on the small of Sam's back. "I don't know," Sam answers honestly, steadier. "I'm…this is all new to me. It might. Give me something to focus on."

Marta, Olivia's next-oldest sister, comes forward, a small plush bumblebee, ratty with age and use, in her hand. _"Es su favorita,"_ she says. It's her favorite. _"Ella siempre durmiò con ella."_ She always slept with it.

The soft velvety texture of it slides over his fingertips and already Sam is gone. His entire body _jerks_ like a toy on a string and though he knows intellectually, he hasn't gone anywhere, he can still feel the passage of wind, electric and cold, past him and he suddenly _is_ somewhere else, outdoors where the snow crunches under his shoes and squishes underneath that. There is a smell, green and garbage-y, and a low mournful groan, echoing out across the distance. He sees Natalia, curled small and watchful in darkness, a weapon, rusty and indistinct in her hands and her nightgown wet and muddy and bloodstained, her breath silver clouds.

"The river," he mumbles, teetering somewhere between _here_ and _there_ and no longer entirely certain which is which. "Somewhere by the river. By the train."

And then, suddenly, he is aware of a new onlooker, a new set of eyes. Not like Dean's, or Olivia's or Gervese's. Eyes he can feel on his skin like a touch and a touch that burns at that. Greedy eyes, eyes that would devour if they could. Eyes that—if he could actually _see_ them—would be the ugly yellow of pus, of sulfur, rot and decay. They are looking for him, those eyes, and getting closer with every butterfly flutter of his attenuated heart…

Pain explodes in his head, fiery and intense. Sam yelps and flails as the pain localizes to his ear. He comes back to himself and realizes Dean is twisting and digging into his earlobe. He bats Dean away, irritably. "Quit it!"

Dean smacks him in the back of the head and then nods towards the door in a clear _let's go. You're spooking the natives._

"Should… We should go with you," Gervese says, taking his arm from around Olivia and stepping forward. "It could be dangerous. We can help." There is a murmur of agreement from the assembled family. People start shuffling to the back, to get coats and scarves.

"No…" Sam tries to recollect his thoughts, disoriented by the intensity and clarity of what just happened. Seems like his time with Missouri is paying off after all. "No, Dean and I will be okay. Other people would just…get in the way."

"Was…" Olivia is crying, a flood of helpless tears running down her face in silver-clear streams. "Is she all right? Natalia?"

"She's fine," Sam avers quickly. He looks sidelong at Dean. Dean is looking at him and they don't need words to hear the unspoken _so far_ between them.

Dean steps forward and holds Olivia's face between his hands, kissing her cheek. Olivia's lips tremble unsteadily and she nods, her hands clutching at Dean's arm and lapel. Sam only barely stops his jaw from dropping open. He's struck by the realization that these are Dean's _friends_ , people who have been caring about him and for him all this time, even in silence. They understand him, even when he says nothing at all. Olivia hugs Dean hard and fiercely, clings until Marta and _Abuela_ Selene draw her away.

"We are going with you," Gervese declares. He's got a parka on that nearly doubles his width and a baseball bat in his thin scholarly hand. His hazel eyes, which were so friendly and welcoming, are cold and flat. "Natalia is my daughter and I cannot stand idly by and let others take the risks for my family." His brothers, Basile and Reza rumble agreement, as do Olivia's brother, Jaime, and her cousins, Arturo, Javier and Julian. They are all armed, makeshift weapons of tire irons and chains. They all look like they know how to hurt someone with them.

Dean shrugs and so Sam shrugs too. "Okay."

 _"Nosotros rezearmos," Abuela_ Selene declares firmly, holding Olivia's copper hand in hers. We will pray.

***

When Olivia retrieves the bumblebee from the floor and tries to hand it to Sam, Dean interposes between them and takes it lightly from her nerveless grip, tucking it into his jacket pocket. "Oh," she says dully, her other hand still twined through Marta's. "Of course. I'm sorry." Dean pats her fingers briefly. _It's okay. You didn't know._

"Dean?" Sam asks, and Dean thinks he's probably the only one that hears the shaky splinter of doubtfulness that threads through Sam's tone. He gives Sam the nod and then jerks his head towards the door. 

"Dean?" Olivia says, and something in _her_ voice makes him look back at her, even though his blood's starting to surge and he's eager to be gone. 

"You bring my daughter home, Dean. One way or another. Bring her back to me." Olivia is burning now, a flame that shines through the heart of her to glow from her eyes.

Dean nods.

Sam is steadier, calmer when the cold of the outside air smacks him in the face; Dean can see it in Sam's face, the set of his shoulders. Sam pauses for a moment on the sidewalk, taking his bearings. While he does, Dean retrieves the shotguns and Glock from the Impala, plus the gas can that he hands off to Basile and a handful of road flares that he gives into Gervese's keeping.

"Dean!" Sam calls, and Dean tosses him the Mossberg. Sam fields it with one hand, checking the load and safety quickly. This is familiar. This is something they know how to do, aid they can offer. "This way," Sam says, and they go.

Missouri tells them that Lawrence is a city that wears its damage under a layer of cosmetics, like an old woman still playing the coquette and dying her hair. Dean thinks that could pretty much sum up any city. Pretty faces with dark hearts. 

Sam leads them down Fourth to Riverfront, by the Union Pacific station. The smell of the river gets stronger, raw and organic, somehow vegetative. At the crossroads, Sam asks for the bee again, holding it gingerly in one hand, then both, dwarfing the plush between his fingers. 

Finally, sweat glittering on his forehead, Sam shakes his head. "I...I don't know. I can't… I can't see anything else."

Dean pats Sam's shoulder and puts his mouth up against Sam's ear. "It's okay," he whispers, too soft for anyone but Sam to hear. "We can spread out now." Sam nods, and Dean presses a fast kiss against the cartilage before drawing away.

"We should spread out," Sam says. "What I saw before…I think it was a garage or a storage shed. She was hiding. But…"

"The thing that took her," Gervese balances the bat lightly in his hands. Two days ago, Dean wouldn't have been able to imagine this sight; Gervese always seemed to be a rather soft man, more interested in books and plants…but he guessed you could say the same about Sam. And on the other hand, Dean knew—had seen firsthand—how much he was willing to do for Sam or…or Dad, so it's not surprising. Not exactly. He's more surprised how fast they all cottoned onto the idea that what took Natalia wasn't your garden variety pedophile. "It can be killed, yes?" 

"Yeah," Sam nodded. "It can be killed."

Gervese nods in return. "Then that is all I need know."

There's no question of Sam and Dean sticking together; not for Dean and Sam doesn't try to argue with him. "What is it?" Dean asks, handing Sam his gun long enough to scramble over a wooden palisade fence. First his shotgun comes flying over after him and then Sam's. Dean scans the yard, paranoid about the pockets of deep shadow, where his eyes can't quite reach. The house is dark and shabby, presumably empty

"Something from the wolfen family, I think," Sam answers, when he drops to the dirt next to Dean and retrieves his gun from Dean's hands. "It… I didn't see it very well; it was hard to tell."

They work their way slowly and methodically through back yards and alley ways towards First where it dead-ends not far from the Kansas River. Dean feels pretty damn pleased with himself when a shadow of something swiftly moving crosses his peripheral vision, and he turns and brings up the shotgun fast enough to break the creature's killing lunge, enormous cracked and yellowed talons catching and grating on the metal. The momentum is still enough to fling him backwards though, and he thuds into the frozen ground hard, snow and God knows what else shoveling wetly down his neck.

"Dean!" Sam shouts, and his gun goes off in a magnesium flare and flat thunderbolt crash.

Dean doesn't have enough time to get up; he fumbles the gun around and seats the stock against his shoulder. His shot goes a little wide—shoulder instead of head—and the creature, wolfen, what the fuck _ever_ , roars. Its eyes are phosphorescent green and completely inhuman, less than even a normal wolf's. It's gone faster than his eyes can track and Sam is at his side, dragging Dean up by his collar and half strangling him.

Dean gets his feet under him, grabs onto Sam's arm and uses all that damn height to haul himself up the rest of the way. 

The door to the garage creaks, a horror movie noise, and Sam and Dean are bringing their guns to bear when a soft tremolo asks shakily, "Dean?"

Dean opens his mouth. Closes it. Then: "Natalia?"

She hurtles from the garage like a pale comet, her long black hair trailing behind her. Dean barely moves the shotgun aside before she leaps on him, driving all the air out of his lungs. He grunts and she climbs him like a monkey, wrapping skinny arms around his neck. Her skin is _freezing_ and her teeth are chattering with cold. "I knew someone would come!"

Sam skins out of his jacket and wraps it around Natalia. "Are you hurt?" Sam asks, thumbing dirty hair out of her eyes. The light back here is piss poor, but her grip is almost strangling and Dean can't feel the warmth of blood anywhere her tiny body presses against his.

Natalia shakes her head in denial. "I prayed," she confides to Dean. "I prayed real hard that somebody'd come save me. Can I go home now? I want my papi and my mama."

"Yeah," Dean says. He meets Sam's eyes over Natalia's shoulder. Sam's got that wet-eyed Dr. Phil look on his face, like Dean just did something especially _touching_. Dean rolls his eyes, hands off the shotgun and pulls the Glock from the back holster. They're a long way from safe.

But when they finally get out onto the street, Dean carrying Natalia piggy-back and Sam covering his six, they find Gervese and his brothers and the men of Olivia's family systematically beating the wolfen to a bloody sticky pulp.

"DAD!" Natalia shouts, possibly deafening Dean in one ear forever. She wriggles down from Dean's back faster than he can say 'spit' and leaps into her father's arms. Gervese holds her up to the sky, laughing. "I knew you'd come," she chatters. "I knew it!"

"We heard the gunshots," Basile explains with a shrug, pouring gasoline all over the bits of corpse. Julian produces a book of matches and in short order, the corpse is burning.

It's not hard for Dean to lag back as they head back towards Gervese and Olivia's; the Olivera-Mate men are excited and happy, clapping each other on the back and mocking each other in loud, rowdy voices. Dean, on the other hand, feels halfway between upchucking his Christmas tamales and ducking into some dark alley and fucking Sam until they're both blind. Either of which are pretty unacceptable options at this stage in the game.

He doesn't really notice Sam until Sam throws an arm around his shoulders and pulls him along. "C'mon, cheer up," he says, grinning from ear to ear. "We saved the girl, killed the bad guy, and I think we've got a lock on getting some of that caramel cake you were telling me about. We did good."

And the thing is? When Sam puts it like that, Dean can't really disagree with him.

***

Sam's good mood lasts through the return to the house and the celebration that follows, helped considerably by shots of Jaime's washtub mescal. Missouri's a teetotaler, and he hasn't had anything more than a couple beers since the accident. By the time he and Dean stagger out, amid protests and catcalls, Sam knows he's pretty fucking blown, loose in his skin and lazy. 

"You okay to drive?" he asks Dean, slumping down in the passenger's seat. It's a couple miles back to Missouri's and it's the freezing ass end of night/morning but they could walk it, if they had to. The streetlight pricks gold sparks off the spiky ends of Dean's hair, gilds the sharp line of his nose and outlines the shape of his mouth, his chin. Sam's conscious of the desire to lean across the seat and just _have_ Dean's mouth, to bite and kiss until he tastes blood, to do the same to his neck, marking Dean up. He's buzzed up from the hunt and mellowed out from the mescal and he wants to fuck Dean so bad he can taste it like metal in the back of his throat. He wants to watch Dean come and know that _he_ did that.

"Yeah," Dean's voice is rough. When he turns his head to look at Sam, Sam sees the same hunger there, visible even in the crappy half-light. Sam can't help it; his eyes are drawn down and he sees Dean hardened against his thigh, clearly visible through the denim and just begging to be touched, held.

"Dean—" It's barely a scrape of sound over his teeth and clumsy tongue. Blood rushes southerly and he's sweating even though he can still see his breath.

"Don't," Dean whispers back in the same grated and peeled tone. It's only one syllable, but there's a shake on the end of it.

 _"She doesn't have to know,"_ Sam hisses…or at least that was his plan. What comes out of his mouth instead is, "I could feel it looking for me." Dean looks at him, confused and Sam scrambles for the words to explain, not sure how he ended up on this topic when he'd planned for something else entirely. "When I was having my vision." It doesn't surprise him that he doesn't feel the same obscure sense of shame talking to Dean about it that he does with everyone else. "When I have my vision _s_ ," he clarifies, the muddy memory of what he was doing before he'd broken Missouri's breakfront with his back comes back to him indistinctly. 'The demon. I can feel it looking for me."

"Does it know where we are?"

"No." Sam closes his eyes. He can't keep looking at Dean if they're not going to be fucking. He slumps down and adjusts himself uncomfortably. Even that small, functional touch makes him twitch and shiver, and he resigns himself to a fast rude jerk off, if he manages to stay awake that long. "Not yet."

"Soon?" Dean starts the Impala, pulls out from the curb. "Is it in your head?"

"No." Then, realizing that probably wouldn't be enough explanation, "It's…in the _space_ where my visions _are_ …" He stops, realizing how ludicrous that sounds, and sighs. "God, I need to invent a whole new language for this shit."

"Don't," Dean says. "I barely understand what you're talking about half the time _now._ "

They drive the rest of the short distance in silence and Sam falls into an uneasy half-doze. It's Dean who mostly drags him from the car and into the house. The fanlight in the hall is on, but otherwise it's dark. Dimly, Sam remembers that Missouri was planning to attend midnight Mass and then go to an after-hours party held by her friend Aleesha.

"I'm drunk, you know," he confides in Dean as they stumble their way up the steep stairs. "I don't…don't even remember the last time I was this drunk."

"Yeah, I can kinda tell," Dean says quietly. He kicks aside the door to Sam's room and they wobble unsteadily to the bed, where Dean shucks him off. Sam hits the mattress with an _oof_ and sprawls, boneless.

"This would be…the perfect time for you to take advantage of me, in…my inebriated state," he wheedles, keeping hold of the cuff of Dean's jacket with his fingertips.

Dean's smile is rueful. "Only you would roll out a word like 'inebriated' while shitfaced, Sammy." He ruffles Sam's hair with his other hand and starts to tug out of Sam's grip.

Sam lurches up, grabbing more strongly. "Dean," he says, more seriously. "Don't go."

"I have to," Dean reminds him.

"It's not sex. I don't…I don't care about the sex." The look on Dean's face is affronted and Sam rolls his eyes. "God, Dean, don't make me stroke your ego now, okay? The sex is great, wonderful, mind-blowing… I just… I don't want to sleep alone, okay? Is that so terrible? Is she really going to blow a gasket for that? And if she does, so what? Just…don't leave me, man." He'd like to blame this on the mescal; he knows he's ripped right open, blotto and stupid and teary-eyed and just plain sloppy. He knows he's begging, which just is _never_ any good, but he's also _terrified_ —of what he did, of what he can do, of what it might mean, of the Thing hunting through the dark for him—and Dean is the one person and one thing that's ever been able to talk him down off this crumbling precipice.

He can't read Dean's eyes and his expression is closed, set. It's times like this Sam has to remember that Dean came to Stanford for _him_ , remember the break in Dean's voice in Chicago when he'd admitted the reasons why, remember the wondering desperate look on Dean's face when Sam promised not to leave. He has to remind himself sometimes that Dean wants him, needs him, because although he knows there's nothing Dean won't do for him, sometimes he feels like he's always asking too much and not giving enough in return. And he wonders how long Dean will be willing to let that continue, if Sam's falling apart all over him all the time.

"I'm scared," he admits hoarsely, hating himself for doing it. "Please."

Dean's hands clench and his eyes close, noticeable only by the movement of his lashes. Then he drags the chair closer to the bedside and sits down. Sam lets out a breath he didn't even know he was holding and releases Dean's sleeve. Dean shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it over the chair back while Sam unlaces and tugs off his boots, takes off his own coat and unthreads his belt from his jeans.

"I'm sorry," he offers when he stretches out and wriggles into the mattress. He feels heavy and slow and tired almost to death but he doesn't want to sleep. He thinks he's probably as afraid of that as everything else.

"Sam—" Dean breathes, exasperated. His fingers shove through Sam's hair, "You don't have to be sorry."

Sam reaches up and puts his fingers over Dean's, closing his eyes. It's almost no time at all before he's asleep.

***

Dean knows he should get up and leave, once Sam falls asleep, but he doesn't.

 _I can feel it looking for me._ And, _I don't want to end up like Meg. Promise me._

He misses their Dad with a terrible, horrible fierceness that sometimes makes him want to curl up and die, but now he just simply and profoundly wishes John Winchester was here to tell him what to do. He'd brought Sam here—okay, _followed_ Sam here—because it'd seemed like the right thing to do. Because Sam needs it and Dean will make the Heavens bow and break Hell in half to give Sam what he needs. And okay, so the shit with the bumblebee had been kind of creepy-cool, a genuine and bona-fide talent that could be handy as hell….someday. If they live. If the demon doesn't find them and snuff them like candles.

But Sam doesn't look like this is helping. He looks crumpled and exhausted. It's usually hard to tell with all the baggy crap he wears, but seeing how his beltless jeans slide down to expose the thin fuzzed expanse of his belly and the bony hollows of his hips, Dean can tell Sam's lost weight—and the kid doesn't have enough to start with. The visible white curve of his underwear glows in the half-light like a beacon, inviting touch.

Dean closes his eyes, breathing hard, and leans back in the chair, away from Sam. Sam shifts restlessly, one hand idly sliding to scratch his stomach just below the flattened dimple of his navel. "Jess," he sighs, and arches his back.

It's stupid to be jealous of a dead girl, and anyway, Dean doesn't go in for that kind of bullshit, but even so, his jaw clenches up tight and irritation spikes red and painful in his forehead. _Fuck,_ he thinks, disgusted with himself, _I need to take my dumb ass to bed before I start boo-hooing like this is a Lindsay Lohan movie or something. I'm too tired for this shit._

He pulls the blanket up over Sam and gets another one down from the closet for good measure. It smells like the chi-chi herbal sachets that Missouri uses instead of mothballs; he's a little ashamed to admit he knows what goes in them now, another one of his chores. Anyway, it's a good smell and every time Sam touches him lately, he's amazed at how cold Sam's skin is, so it's not like he doesn't need the extra warmth. He'd bought Sam another hoodie, brand new, insulated and everything, for Christmas, but there hadn't been time to give it to him without making a big production of it, which Dean hates. He covers Sam with the blanket, pulls the box out from under Sam's bed and puts the hoodie over the back of the chair where Sam'll find it in the morning. Sam just mutters and pulls the blankets over his head. 

On his way out of Sam's room, he sees Missouri making her way up the stairs. She moves amazingly quiet for such a big woman. For a moment, they look at each other; Dean tensed up for another lecture, another reprimand, another reminder of what a horrible fuck-up he is as a big brother. 

He wants to scream at her: _I've been good! I haven't laid a fucking hand on him, not when he was kissing me, touching me, not even when he was drunk and just plain_ asking _me, and I just_ can't _anymore, I can't…_

But that's nothing he would say to her—or anyone—even if he had the words to do it with. Missouri only looks at him, her head tilted a little to one side and says gently, "Merry Christmas, Dean."

Dean swallows hard and nods, goes back to his room and locks the door. He crawls into the bed without bothering to undress, turns his face into the wall and feels himself shaking apart.

***

The rain. The goddamned rain.

It's worse than ever, stinging on his exposed skin and so cold it slices to the bone. He can't see anything through the heavy gray curtains of it, can't breathe through its fine soaking mist. He's tired. Tired of slogging through the clinging, devouring flats of mud, tired of futilely searching for a direction, another person, some sign of life. Tired of finding nothing and no one, being the last and only in vast fields of nothing. He's just _tired_.

Sam sinks to the ground and wraps his arms around his kilted knees, letting the rain beat down on his shoulders and getting colder and stiffer with every moment that passes. He doesn't care much.

_"Sam…"_

It's been a year. It could be forever and he'd know the sound of her voice. "Jess?"

He lifts his head from his arms. She's standing over him, looking down with that crooked rueful smile that makes his chest hurt. She's beautiful. God, so fucking beautiful. "Jess?" he says again, confused.

Her smile widens and she holds out her hand to him. He doesn't even have to think about it; he reaches out and takes hold. She lifts him to his feet and he throws his arms around her, burying his face in her neck and inhaling the smell of her—Jessica McClintock and Pantene and clean warm skin. "I miss you," he murmurs against her throat, wanting to press her through him and into his skin where he'll never lose hold of her again. "I miss you so much."

"Oh baby," she pulls apart from him and puts a hand on either side of his face. Her eyes are sad. "My poor poor baby. You know I miss you; of course I do."

He tries to close with her again, but she holds him off, sliding her cool fingers into his. For the first time, he notices she's dry. There's no shimmer effect, no force field; the rain doesn't bounce off of her. She's just untouched by it. "C'mon," she says and tugs at his hand.

He would follow her…anywhere. So he does.

There are a million questions he'd like to ask her; he knows it and yet he can't bring a single one to the front of his mind. Except: "Jess, where…?"

"Shhh," she answers. "I'll show you."

He doesn't know how long they walk. A long time. The mud sucks and clings at his legs. He's shivering, miserable with wet and cold. But finally they stop, in a place that looks just like every other place here. 

"Jess, I don't…"

 _"Look,"_ she says, faintly exasperated.

Sam turns, and looks.

"Dean," he says stupidly.

Jess smiles. "Yes."

"What is he doing here? What…?" Dean lies in the mud, naked and curled into a fetal ball, his skin fuchsia and blue with cold. "Dean?" he calls, but Dean gives no sign or movement he's heard, shivering like he's going to die. "Dean?"

"This is all his," Jess says, shaking her hair back over her shoulder as she squats, pulling him with her. 

"What do you mean?" Sam's head turns sharply.

Jess shrugs and gestures. "He made this. It's his. This is all Dean."

 _Oh,_ Sam thinks. _Oh, no._

But what he says is, "How do I get him out of here? How do I fix this?"

Jess smiles the way she would when he'd say something especially entertaining. "Well," she says, "this is a good start." She puts her hand out and pushes Dean onto his back. Dean whimpers, a sound Sam has _never_ heard him make, and Jess tugs him forward to put his hand in Dean's. Dean's eyes open.

Sam sits up. He swings his legs out of the bed and gets up, still a little unsteady on his feet. Dean's gone, but he knew that. Knew it before he'd even woken all the way. _Fuck,_ he thinks. _Fuck. Dean…why didn't you_ say _something?_

But Dean had, hadn't he? Sam had spent all this time marveling over Dean's silences with everyone else, smug in the knowledge that Dean would speak to him and only to him…conveniently overlooking Dean's silences with him. Conveniently forgetting how little Dean ever said, even when he talked the most.

_Enough is enough, Dean._

He crosses the hall to Dean's room and twists the knob. And twists the knob. And twists it one more time for good measure. It's locked. Fucking _locked_. Sam stands in the hallway, stunned and hurt and pissed in about equal measure. It had never occurred to him that Dean would ever lock him out, even if he wouldn't (couldn't) share Sam's bed.

He turns the words over again in his mind. Locked. Him. Out.

"Oh, fuck _that_ ," Sam mutters. He goes back to his room and digs his lockpicks out of his luggage. The lock is old and simple; he probably could have done it with a bobby pin and it's only a few seconds before he's standing over Dean's bed. Dean is curled up into a little ball, exactly as he was in Sam's dream, which obscurely just pisses Sam off more.

He shoves Dean hard in the shoulder. "Wake the fuck up."

Dean's a light sleeper; Sam's barely touched him and Dean's rolling, latching onto Sam's wrist with a sudden ferocity that grinds the bones together. His whirling confused eyes lock onto Sam's face and he relaxes, letting Sam go. "Oh, what the hell, dude?"

Sam opens his mouth to retort and realizes he doesn't exactly have one. What's he going to say? _Why didn't you tell me you were miserable?_ This _miserable? What can I do? What happened? Is it me? Did I do this to you?_ He may have crossed a good many lines to get to this point, but he hasn't lost his testicles and he's not about to have some teenage hair-pulling drama all in front of Dean.

"What?" Dean demands again, dragging himself upright and wiping his face tiredly with one hand. Even in the dark, Dean looks exhausted and too young, slumped against the wall.

_Why didn't I see this? How could I not see this?_

Sam fights down the impulse to punch Dean, despite his uncharitable suspicion it might be the only thing that would get through. He can't do anything, though, about the words that burst out of him, hissing and angry. "You idiot! I miss him too! I lost Dad too! I miss Dad and I miss _you_ , Dean." He throws his hands up. "Where…fuck, where _are_ you, even? I'm scared and I'm freaked out and I _need_ you! I need you here and you aren't here."

"I'm here. I'm right here. I'm always right here." Dean sounds affronted, even though he still won't look Sam in the face, focused on a point about three inches in front of his recumbent knee. "I just...you don't need that. You need me to be your brother. I can do that. Just let me be your brother."

 _God, not this again._ Sam sits down on the bed's edge, ignoring the way Dean pulls back another few inches. "You _are_ my brother. You will always be my brother." He takes a breath, trying to marshal his words into something Dean will _get_. "But…Dean, you're _everything_ now. I get it. I finally fucking get it. You are all I have. _And that's okay._ "

Dean shakes his head. "But I'm not. You need this, being here. I can't help you with that. I can't do _anything._ All I can do is get out of your way. You said it yourself."

It bugs him, how Dean can't remember the names of half the girls he's fucked, or the fact that Sam asked him to pick up more toothpaste from the store, but he seems to have perfect fucking recall on every stupid, hurtful thing Sam's ever said or done. "Dean, you are gloriously missing the point, man. This is something I need to _learn._ Not something I need to be. What I need to _be_ is with you. I don't...I don't have anything else if you won't be with me on this. I can't do this if you aren't with me. If you won't be...all the things we are." He reaches for Dean again and again Dean shifts back. 

"I can't. I _can't._ It's like...it's the last thing he said to me, man. 'Take care of your brother.' This isn't what he meant. I'm fucking up. I'm fucking up so bad." Dean rakes a hand through his hair, leaving spikes and peaks behind.

"Dean…" Another pause. No one pushes his buttons as fast or hard as Dean and sometimes it's just too _easy_ to say the stupid hurtful thing to him. He summons the image of Dean from his dream, naked and alone and cold in that entire vast nothingness. "You are _not_ fucking up. You can't blame yourself for not being omniscient. _You didn't make this shit happen._ You are everything to me and you are all I have left and do you think so little of me that you think I don't see all that you do? That you just give and give and...God, _you_ don't see all the things you do, do you?

Dean just looks at him. Sam doesn't get it. He just does. Not. Get. It.

Sam leans forward and puts his hand over Dean's knee lightly, the same cautious gentleness he'd give to a feral cat. Dean shivers even under that mild touch. "You do _everything_ for me. I don't know how to do this without you. I just need you. _You._ With me. Just be Dean. I just _need_ Dean." And the thing is, he can see Dean shredding. Right in front of him, he can see Dean tearing himself into tiny miserable pieces and he doesn't know if it's better to let it go and leave it alone or fight for it. 

"You... I... Sam, I want to. I want to so bad, and everything I've _ever_ wanted this bad... It just… It never _works._ " 

Sam thinks if Dean presses himself any tighter into the wall, the plaster's going to crack, so he backs off a little, his throat aching with the admission, the first of it's kind. 

"But it did," Sam whispers. "We _were_ working. When did it stop, Dean? Why did it stop? Because it seems to me it only stops working when you make it stop. I don't...understand. Why are you doing this now? What happened? Who..."

"It's not important." Flat. Toneless.

"We're not being _punished_ Dean. I won't believe that. I can't. I don't know why you…" Sam stops, his ears catching up to his brain. "Wait. What's not important? Who's been..."

"Well, maybe we _should be_! I mean, Dad _died_ , Sam!" Dean's voice just shatters, breaks into jagged splinters and hoarse shards. Sam wants to grab him, shake him, fuck him into a wall. "He died. I didn't save him. I couldn't save him."

"Do you really think that? That what we do is evil? That we deserve this?"

Dean's eyebrows bunch and the _you are such a moron_ look he gives Sam is so typically Dean that Sam can't quite breathe for a second. "No. No, not like that. There's nothing less evil in me than what I feel about you. But I _owe_ him. I owe him for failing. And maybe what I owe... Maybe _I_ don't deserve this."

Sam's shoulders hunch up and when he speaks, his voice is smaller than he'd like. "Maybe he didn't want to be saved," he offers. "Maybe we just can't save everyone or everything and it sucks but we can't. We couldn't. I could have shot him. Would you have been happier if I shot him? Or if you did? That thing was fucking bound and determined to rip another piece off this family and _I'm_ the one that could have stopped it if I only knew what the hell I was _doing_ with this thing in my head. If it's anyone's fault –it's mine."

"No! No. Sam—"

Sam shakes his head, hand fisted in the rumpled blanket so hard the joints ache. "But if what we have is good, if it _strengthens_ us, we should take it and have it and not let it go." He looks at Dean, willing Dean with every cell in his body to understand, to listen. 

Dean's eyes flicker, but he doesn't rise to Sam's words, picking up the other thread of the argument instead. "It shouldn't have been up to you in the first place. It was my job. I'm the oldest."

"But Dean—it is my job." Sam rakes a hand through his hair. "I mean…sometimes it is and it will be. And I'm sorry to tell you but you don't get to go through the migraines and the nightmares and all the shit this thing is really about."

The sun lines around Dean's eyes bunch. "Sam—" Dean reaches for him, grabbing Sam's T-shirt at the shoulders.

"It's _me_ , Dean," Sam tells him gently. "I don't know why either but I'd never wish this on anyone and nothing you can say will make me wish it on you."

Now it's Dean's turn to sound small. "If I could take it, I would."

"I know you would." He reaches for Dean's face, bracketing it on either side with his thumbs so Dean can't just pull away. "I know that. That's why I need you. You said to me that if I wanted to blame something for Jessica's death then I should blame the thing that killed her. That's _still true._ This is. Not. Your. Fault."

 _"Of course it's my fault!"_ Dean whisper-shouts, fiercely enough that Sam recoils. "I should have...been better. I should have been smarter. If I hadn't been thinking so much about you, about us, if I hadn't wasted that bullet… I would have _been there_ to back him up so those demon sons-of-bitches never got their hands on him in the first place. I'm a fuck up, Sammy. A fuck up and a freak."

And it's one thing to know that Dean thinks these things, or…to suspect. It's another to have Dean spitting them at you, nothing in his voice but dead serious sincerity. 

"Dean! Jesus, I don't know how to get _through_ to you! Dean…you _kept me alive_. More than once. Doesn't that mean anything? And I'm a fuck-up and a freak too. Who in our family _isn't_ a fuck-up and a freak?"

"Mom."

Dean produces the word so promptly, so unhesitatingly, cutting like a razor, and for a moment, Sam can only look back at Dean, nonplussed. But if he can't hide behind the ghost of Jess, then he can't let Dean hide behind the ghost of Mom. "Well, she's dead, Dean." Sam sighs. "And maybe that's why we are the way we are. But we can't change it now. I wouldn't change it. Not anymore."

Dean shakes his head. "You're just saying that. You just...you think I'm all you have. But you can have _more_ Sam. You had it before."

"And she's dead too," Sam hisses. _She put my hand in yours and then she walked away, you stupid fucker._ "You're the only one, Dean. You're the only one who isn't dead. Who's strong enough to live. With me. With all the evil I attract."

"I... I didn't go away, Sam. I'm _right here_." 

Sam looks at him. His head aches. His head aches so bad. "You're trying to go away." 

"I'm just saying...you don't need me. Not like that."

"Yes. I. Do. Don't tell me what I need, Dean. It's been a long fucked-up road and I'm a grown man and I choose you. I _choose you._ "

"Sam..." Dean's voice trails off into uselessness

"I do, Dean. It's you." Sam's hand skims over the bristle of Dean's hair and then down to cup the nape of his neck. "I told you last time…we're not going to do this any more." He leans forward and rests his temple against Dean's, listening to the quiet, ragged sob of Dean's breath until it relaxes and evens out. God, he's missed this. How can Dean not get that? "Dean," he says, "if you run from me, I'm just going to run after you. Don't you know that?" Dean doesn't say anything, but Sam feels the shudder that goes through him, as much an answer—an acquiescence—as Sam ever gets. He tilts Dean's bent head towards him and envelops those bitten and chapped lips with his own.

Dean's eyelashes flutter, but his mouth opens to Sam's tongue, head angling up. Sam's fingers tighten on the back of Dean's neck, thumb stroking the hollow behind his ear. It's been weeks. Agonizing weeks of having Dean almost this close and distant as the sun, of not being able to touch him, suck him, fuck him. It's hard not to just drag Dean down and _have_ him, hurt him, mark him the way Dean marked Sam so many years ago.

"Dean?" He's breathless and he sounds it, but it doesn't matter and he doesn't care. They're past having to hide this from each other, what they do to each other. They're past this being anything other than it is.

Dean shudders, but he nods jerkily. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah."

Sam closes those centimeters between them again, his hands fumbling over Dean's clothes, worming underneath until he finds skin, hot and slightly roughened by hair. Dean's arms just go around him, dragging Sam close like he's afraid Sam will just evaporate and disappear. Sam twists and wriggles until he's hugging Dean too, his face pressed against Dean's throat in hard biting kisses that will leave bruises like dark petaled flowers.

All at once, Dean stiffens. Sam feels the heat spill out of Dean like water poured out of a cup, replaced by the same watchful coldness he's used to hold Sam at a distance all this time. Dean's arms unlock and retreat until his palms are flat against Sam's chest, pushing even as he tries to tug out of Sam's grasp.

 _No,_ Sam can't even choke the word out through his tightening throat. _No._

There is no noise or sound, but Sam's still John Winchester's son. Sam turns and looks over his shoulder and sees Missouri standing in the hallway. He should be horrified. She looks horrified. He should be embarrassed, ashamed, filled with self-loathing…all the things he sees reflected on Missouri's face. He knows all the 'shoulds' and yet they pause and break over him like a wave.

Dean takes the opportunity to drag himself away from Sam. He scoots backwards into the corner and his eyes never leave Missouri. He looks stricken, haunted. He looks afraid.

And Sam understands.

He understands all of it in a single wordless burst; the silences and awkward moments, things said and unsaid and the slow sinking chasm of Dean's misery. The huge and massive unhappiness that created the landscape that's haunted Sam _since they arrived here_.

_Stupid. Stupid. How could you be so stupid, Sam?_

"You… You did this to him, didn't you?"

"Sam…" He doesn't realize he's gotten up from the bed, doesn't realize he's left the room, doesn't realize he's advancing on Missouri, doesn't hear the dangerous low note in his voice until she backs away, nervous.

"Why? Why…why would you take him from me?"

"Sam, he's your _brother_!"

 _"Do you think I don't know that?"_ Sam doesn't raise his voice, but he doesn't mistake his words for anything other than a shout and Missouri flinches, tugging her sweater around her like armor. "Do you really think I ever _forget_ that?"

"It's _sick!_ "

Something in Sam's mind and chest stabs, deep and sickening. The long hallway table shakes and jitters suddenly against the wood. The pictures rattle in the frames, against the plaster.

"And if it is? What business is it of yours? You didn't have to hurt him. You didn't have to _do_ that to him when he's already fucked up and broken. You didn't have to…" The vase of paperwhites on the table tips over and Sam takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, striving for equilibrium. After a moment, the rattle of the table and the pictures stops. "You didn't have to try and take him away when I need him most. When he's all I have."

"He's your _brother_ , Sam," Missouri insists again.

 _"And. I. Love. Him."_ Sam says, his voice shaking and trembling but cold as the ice around his heart. " _I_ fought for him, I'd die for him and he's _mine_."

Missouri shakes her head numbly; there are tears standing out in her dark eyes and as he watches one of them spills over onto her plump cheek. It scares him a bit, that he feels nothing, looking at her. "Your father…"

"Made more than his share of fuck-ups and mistakes," Sam says evenly. "He wasn't a saint and he wasn't God and I didn't let him dictate what I would do with my life when he was alive. He's sure not going to do it now."

"Sam."

Sam turns his head at the sound of Dean's voice. _Dean's voice._ It hits him all over again, the way it didn't, when it was Natalia and he was hopped up on adrenaline. 

Dean stands in the doorway of his room, braced against the jamb like it's the only thing holding him up. Sam feels the burning ice of his rage close around his heart again, knowing that Missouri—his theoretical mentor and friend—did this. To _Dean_.

"Sam, don't."

Sam's teeth clench and he looks back at Missouri, who's backed all the way to the end of the narrow hallway, silent tears slipping freely down her face now. He doesn’t know that he _feels_ any more than he did a second ago, but something in him unclenches and relaxes to be replaced by a rather nauseated weariness. "Yeah," Sam says dully.

He turns away from Missouri, back to Dean and holds out his hand. "Let's get out of here."

Dean looks from Sam's outstretched hand to the weeping Missouri. "Sammy—"

Sam shakes his head. "No. I'm done here. The only question…" His chest hitches and _fuck_ , just like that he feels way too close to tears of his own. "The only question is if you'll come with me."

Dean's still looking at Missouri with those same hurt, haunted eyes, but slowly, he steps out into the corridor and puts his fingers through Sam's. "Don't be stupid."

 _"Dean!"_ Missouri says, and Sam feels Dean flinch.

"No," Sam says flatly, and puts Dean just a little behind him. "Don't say it. Not another fucking word." Sam squeezes Dean's hand tightly, his pulse beating so hard in his throat he can't swallow for a minute.

"You are such an asshole," Dean mutters for Sam's ears alone, and it's such a classic Dean sentiment that Sam bursts out laughing. He wants to turn and kiss Dean right then, just shove him up against the railing and tongue the breath and sense out him. There. Where she _(everyone)_ can see them. Because maybe it is sick, and wrong and as far from normal as he could possibly ever get, but the thought of being without it, of _losing_ it is impossible to contemplate. 

But that would be cruel and he tries very hard not to be cruel. 

So he just hangs onto Dean's shaking fingers and says, "C'mon. Let's get our stuff."

***

"You know you just pulled a total Luke Skywalker there?" Dean asks as they pull into the motel parking lot. It's the first words either of them has spoken since gathering up all their stuff and driving away. He turns off the Impala.

"How's that?"

"Luke Skywalker. Dude, you totally just walked out on Yoda."

Sam laughs, a tired belly-rumble that seems to shake something loose in him, releasing the last taut-wire tension from his shoulders and back. His head falls back on the headrest. "Shit, I did, didn't I? Does that mean I get to dress you up in Princess Leia's slave outfit? Because that was hot."

Dean shakes his head. "Not even if you beg."

Sam flaps a hand in Dean's direction listlessly. "It was worth a shot. You'd look good in the little flappy skirt thing."

Dean shoves across Sam's face with one hand and Sam laughs again. Dean pauses. "You know, she was only doing what she thought was right," he says.

Sam sighs. Then he undoes his seatbelt and slides across the seat, grabbing Dean's face in both hands and mashing his mouth against his brother's, grinding lips and tongue until Dean opens up to the assault with a soft and stifled noise. He kisses Dean like he wanted to at Missouri's, slow and thorough, trying to memorize every soft line and taste, every reaction and inch of give. In the blood-colored light of the motel sign, he watches Dean's eyes close, his face change and soften. Sam closes his own eyes.

Slowly, Dean's hands fumble up Sam's sides, over his shoulders and then onto bare skin. Dean's fingers are like _ice_ and Sam shudders as they curve around the back of his neck, bury in his hair until they're both holding tight and breathing hard.

"I know," Sam says finally, panting, forehead resting against Dean's. "That's what scares me. Because I need you, Dean. I need you so much and I just…"

"I was always right here, Sam."

"No." Sam shakes his head, their bones rubbing against each other. "You weren't. And I… We're not like Dad, Dean."

"Well, no shit."

"No. Don't joke. Dad…we made Dad weaker, being there. But you and me…we're weaker when we're apart. We're just weak. Both of us would've been dead a hundred times over, if not for the other." Sam pauses, feeling his way through it. "You said—do you remember? You said sometimes you felt like you were barely keeping it together. I feel like that all the time, man. And now I've got this thing in my head and I just…I can't keep it together by myself. And I'm sorry…I'm sorry she did that to you. I'm sorry you had to go through that because of me. But it _wasn't me_. That wasn't what I want. And I'm just…I'm not giving up. I'm not giving in. And people can go suck a nut if they've got a problem with that."

"Such a smooth talker, Sammy," Dean laughs softly.

"I mean it, Dean." Sam opens his eyes and tilts his head so he can look at Dean.

Dean's smile fades. "I know you do," he says.

Sam sighs and unlocks his hands from around Dean's face. The joints are stiff and uncooperative for a moment and he flexes them. "We should get a room. It's late."

"I'll do it," Dean says as Sam starts to scoot back across the seat.

Sam stops halfway and tries not to let his surprise show on his face. "You sure?"

Dean's grin is a little friable at the edges, but Sam's willing to overlook that part just to see it again. "I'm always sure, little…Sam."

Sam's hand twitches and Dean's jaw tightens up a bit. "Okay, yeah," Sam says, hastening for casual. "I'll get our stuff."

***

When Sam pushes the door to with his hip and sneaker, he sees there are two queen size beds with ugly green flowered chintz coverlets. Numbly, he lets the bags fall.

"Relax, twinkletoes; it was the last room they had," Dean says, crowding in behind him and kicking the door shut. And suddenly, its so much like always that Sam feels dizzy. "You still get to drool all over my arm and steal the covers."

"I do not drool!" 

"Oh, you so do," Dean growls, dumping his duffels on the table. 

Sam kicks off his shoes and unzips his hoodie. Strips off his socks, shirt and T-shirt. Unbuttons his jeans, shoves them down off his hips and shoves them aside with his foot. He's hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts when he catches Dean looking at him. _Looking_ at him, like he's never seen Sam before, eyes hot. The marks of Sam's teeth dot his throat, purple-black smudges. "What?"

"What're you doing?"

Sam looks down at himself. "I'm getting undressed?" He hates the note of uncertainty in his voice; hates that he can still feel so fumble-fingered and stupid around Dean, even after all this.

"Yeah, I see that. What I mean is…why?" Dean sits down on the far bed's edge, rubbing his hands up and down his thighs like they're sweaty. 

"I…" Feeling like a first class ass with his hands in his underwear, Sam peels his boxers off as well and stands there, naked and with his heart beating too fast. He'd just… Well. "Can we…" He hesitates a second time. He thinks he'd probably rather gouge both eyeballs out with rusty nails before he actually uses the words 'make love' to Dean, but he doesn't want to say 'fuck' either, since that's not really what he means. It seems really important to say nothing less than what he means. He ends up with a lame, "Can we?" and feels the flush come up from his toes all the way into his face.

Dean smiles and reaches for him with both hands. "Yeah, Sammy, we can. C'mere."

***

"How?" Dean asks, against Sam's ear after what seems like hours of just mouths and hands and skin. He can't stop touching Sam, can't decide where to touch him next, like he suddenly doesn't have enough hands. It scares him, how much he's missed this, how hungry he is for it, like he's been starving for weeks. 

Doesn't scare him as much as _not_ having it, though.

Sam's eyes are huge, not just the pupils but the eye itself, as if he can't see enough, as if he has to open them wide so that nothing escapes, not one freckle on Dean's skin, not one of the cuts on his fingers from his last attempt at cooking, nothing. It's unnerving, and at the same time it goes through him in heat and electric tingles that he can't quite put a feeling to other than _goodyespleasemore_. 

Sam's fingers rub against Dean's scalp, bristling his hair against the grain. His other hand is cupped around Dean's thigh, pulling them tight against each other. "I want…would you? I need."

Dean's breath hisses out of him and he has to close his eyes, because _I need_ is all Sam has ever had to say to him for Dean's whole world to tilt on its axis and find a new rotation. "Yeah," he says, and it comes out so faint _he_ can barely make it out, but Sam must read lips or something because his whole face lightens and he comes in to tangle his tongue over Dean's again. And Dean just brings his hands up to cup Sam's face on either side and hangs on while they twine and slide.

"Dean…Dean…" Sam murmurs, a whine in the back of his voice as he shifts and grinds, finding the deep smooth indentation of Dean's hip and slipping into it like he's sliding home. His skin is slick and slightly sticky with sweat; Dean mouths it away, salt and sour. "God, Dean, don't…"

"Don't?"

"Don't tease. Can't… I'm not gonna last and I don't…don't wanna come 'til you're in me." Sam's hand creeps between them to fist his cock; not in pleasure but to keep himself at bay. Dean almost loses it himself, seeing Sam all debauched and undone, panting and needy.

Sam—the ever prepared—grabbed the lube before even coming to Dean on the bed. Dean warms it between his palms and then slips sticky-slick into Sam with two fingers, his other hand leaving tacky handprints on the inside of Sam's thigh, on the furled surface of his balls, on the flat plain of his hip. Both make Sam writhe and make strangled breathy noises in his throat and it's a good thing that Sam grabs him and tugs, pleading, "Now. Now, Dean, now," because he can't wait anymore either.

There is nothing like the sight of Sam, arching up to meet him, legs spreading wider, head tipped back, mouth open. Nothing like the commingled thought and reality of being _inside Sam_ , allowed inside of him, held there by searing heat and clinging muscle. Sam is wanting him, urging him faster with the cant of his hips, hands and knees and the heels of his feet. It's only four hard, plunging strokes later, before Sam comes—loudly—holding Dean down onto him, into him.

"No, no…" Sam murmurs as Dean slows, hot and trembling. "Don't; Dean come on, _oh_ , come on, don't stop, don't stop, God, Dean, please…" His hands slide over Dean's sweaty skin, frantically coaxing, tugging even though he has to be sensitive and bordering on pain. "Come in me; I waited so long, c'mon, you feel so good…come in me."

Dean groans and shoves Sam deeper into the mattress, fucking into him. Sam stops talking, lapsing into incoherent deep-throated cries as Dean drives in and out of him. Sam swipes his hand across his sweat and come-coated belly and shoves his fingers into Dean's mouth, smearing over his tongue.

The taste of Sam bursts over him, salt and semen, and then Dean's coming so hard he can feel it from his eyeballs to his toes. He empties himself into Sam and Sam writhes under him almost as if he's coming a second time his voice stuck on the syllable of Dean's name.

After, Sam's legs collapse to either side of Dean, lax and trembling and Dean can bend far enough to lick his tongue into Sam's mouth and suckle at his bottom lip. "Wait—" Sam says, as Dean shifts his hips to withdraw. "Not yet. Stay…stay in me. Just for a little while."

It can't be comfortable. It isn’t comfortable for Dean and he's on top. But he can hear the naked sincerity of Sam's tone when he says it. He knows it costs Sam something to ask. "Sure," he says, dipping and laving into Sam's mouth again, just to hear that hungry, desperate sound Sam makes. "Long as you want."


End file.
